CPI Chips Away at Forestry Equipment Market

 

CPI Chips Away at Forestry OEM's

Another industry that has discovered the special qualities of CPI waterproof limit switches is certainly in the area of forestry equipment manufacturers. Consider the operational characteristics of your average wood chipper:

• Sits out in the rain for long periods of time.
• Involves the safety management of high power blades, motors, and conveyance systems.
• Vibrates like crazy during normal operation
• Gets very hot over long periods of continuous use
• Expensive and logistically difficult to repair field failures
• In close proximity to human operators…

We could go on… The point is that industrial forestry equipment presents some of the most challenging work environments to be found anywhere. This amazing high power machinery makes logging not only efficient but also safe for man and machine. Consider some of the heavy duty equipment pieces used in forestry management.

1. Wood and Brush Chippers – Forestry versions of these are larger and more powerful than the ones your landscaper uses, but have essentially the same operation under even more intense environmental conditions.
2. Harvester Forwarder – These amazing machines process a tree from soup to nuts, cutting the tree down, trimming the log and cutting it to manageable bites at the same time. These machines do the work it took 1 guy an hour to do with chainsaw and loader, in barely a minute. Check out this video:

3. Feller Bunchers – These large logging machines cut down trees while holding them at the end of crane, allowing the operator to stack them for later processing.
4. Skidders – These machines literally drag downed trees to where they can be loaded on trucks for transport. They are essentially tow trucks for trees with engines producing almost 300 hp and 1000 nm for lifting and dragging multiple long logs at once.
5. Forwarders – these machines are like cranes/ transports for logs, typically used to load logs onto the forwarder for transport elsewhere.
6. Mulcher’s – These vehicles are used to get rid of tree branches and vegetation in large scale land clearing operations but essentially grinding it into pulp! Typically the rotating blade runs at 500 or more horsepower with torque of over 2000 nm.
7. Grinder’s – Unlike your typical wood chipper, these 40 ton mobile factories will grind entire trees into wood pulp, for use in clearing forest area’s of debris.

CPI limit switch solutions were made for this.

A great example of our waterproof, high endurance switches in action is our E1 simulated roller mount switch, recently adopted for a brush chipper manufactured by Vermeer, one of the worlds largest makers of forestry and agricultural equipment. Vermeer engineers were frustrated by field failures of their directional indicator switch caused by water, and the general lack of real world robustness of the previous switch solution.

CPI engineers created a form-fit-function replacement based on our E1 simulated roller design. A right and left version of the switch was created and the basic sealed momentary switch was sealed in santoprene insuring the highest immunity to dirt, sand, rain, vibration, and heat.

In another application, the Brazilian company Lippel chose a similar switch for cam activated position sensing in their wood chipper application, for similar reasons of robustness. In the Lippel solution, three switches are used to detect the changing position of the cam, in this failsafe application. These switches are produced with custom lead lengths that are sealed at the switch end, making for easier assembly in production environments.

Diverse Switching Requirements, One Common Manufacturer

Forestry and Agricultural equipment from lawn mowers, to sprayers, to chippers all the way to mining shovels and backhoe’s, are just a few of the types of equipment using CPI switches in the field. Applications include:

• Machine Position detection
• Safely locking mechanism’s
• Outrigger position detection
• Hand Actuated alarms and lights
• Hood open/closed detection
• Door closed/open
• Safety fail-safe switches
• Mower deck up/down detection
• Crane position detection and anti two-block.

And many more too numerous to mention. If your application requires reliable switching in harsh environments, make the switch to CPI.

Originally posted: https://www.cpi-nj.com/blog/cpi-forestry-equipment-switches/